Oh it'll certainly add to it, but the fact that this show didn't even mention the overwhelming amount of "Mum and Pop" investors in Australia and their role in Australian housing prices with falling interest rates since the early 2000s, says it all. There's not a media outlet in Australia that doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to "Asian Invasion" stories, and who/what they appeal to.
"Sunday Night" is really not investigative journalism whatever they purport to be. Closer to "A Current Affair" or "Today Tonight" in terms of Australian media. They also have quite a history of shameless cross promotion as opposed to actual investigation (see their reports on the "Paleo Diet").

Click to expand...

Oh here we go. Another disgruntled and bitter lefty complaining about Australian mom and dads who grew up in a golden era which every country has investing in their children’s and families future.

The fact you try to shift the topic from the scary amount of foreign investment in not only real estate but businesses and big business at that to the evil “mum n pop” investors exposes your agenda.

Perhaps less communism 101 classes at your local raw food cafe and actually entering the workforce would help. Then you too could enter the market instead of standing on the sidelines, refusing to play the game but complaining about the players.

Oh here we go. Another disgruntled and bitter lefty complaining about Australian mom and dads who grew up in a golden era which every country has investing in their children’s and families future.

The fact you try to shift the topic from the scary amount of foreign investment in not only real estate but businesses and big business at that to the evil “mum n pop” investors exposes your agenda.

Perhaps less communism 101 classes at your local raw food cafe and actually entering the workforce would help. Then you too could enter the market instead of standing on the sidelines, refusing to play the game but complaining about the players.

Click to expand...

Uhuh. Zero information opinion as usual I see. "shift the topic"? Did you even watch the video?
It's just a fact. In Australia falling interest rates lead to a huge amount of investment property purchases by "mum and pop" investors which have drastically driven up prices. I'm not criticising them, but they are the ones which will be worst hurt if the housing bubble deflates, not Chinese millionaires.

Because of them, prices have skyrocketed the last few years and continue going up every month. Basically all the properties including condos and houses are being bought up by Chinese nationals that don’t even live in them. They just buy them all up to park their money. The screwed up thing is that the government just allows it.

A 300 sq foot bachelor suite in Vancouver costs minimum $2500 a month. A tiny 400 sq ft 1 bedroom, anywhere from $3000 plus a month non furnished of course. Not to mention when you go look at a rental, there’s 20 other desperate people also that show up to see the same listing, that are looking for a place to live, so you’re competing with them and it usually turns into a bidding war. The vacancy rate here is around 0.1 percent.

It’s spread into all the other cities too. A small one bedroom in Burnaby is minimum 2400 a month. A crack shack in Vancouver that’s 80 years old will run you no less than 1.5 million right now.

Uhuh. Zero information opinion as usual I see. "shift the topic"? Did you even watch the video?
It's just a fact. In Australia falling interest rates lead to a huge amount of investment property purchases by "mum and pop" investors which have drastically driven up prices. I'm not criticising them, but they are the ones which will be worst hurt if the housing bubble deflates, not Chinese millionaires.

Click to expand...

Far from it. That generation understood the value of saving and invest in property that they can afford. Unlike the millenials living paycheck to paycheck who are buying $500,000+ houses as their first property with less than 10% deposit. Mon n dad investors have other assets built over their lifetime that they can use if it came to the crunch. The ones that will lose everything are the young who spent more they can afford because they’re more concerned with how they appear than what they can afford.

Funny.. I just returned from a vacation in Australia visiting my relatives and we spoke about this subject.

I did notice a huge amount of Asians during my visit. To say I felt extremely comfortable everywhere I went because there were so many Asians (and being Asian myself) does speak to the issue at hand. Is it a problem? I dunno. Australians supposedly pride themselves on being a very diversified nation welcoming of all immigrants. I arrived on Australian Day and my cousin scored tickets to a public concert and the message throughout the event was diversity. Felt a bit forced IMO which suggest underlying issues maybe.

Australia has already implemented laws to help locals battle these super wealthy Chinese immigrants (or at least Sydney has started already). They are required to buy and build new properties and aren't allowed to buy existing properties. The housing market has been slowing down for several months now and prices are dropping.

My relatives immigrated to Australia back in the 70's but it was a bit funny listening to them talk shit about fellow Asians (these fukkin' immigrants are raising property values left and right!...)... Although 2 of my uncles live right next to the Olympic Park and some Chinese investor wanted to buy their house for 4 mil each (to build an apartment complex). They were trying to get him to go up higher but then these new laws were implemented and its not possible at this moment.. oh well.

Far from it. That generation understood the value of saving and invest in property that they can afford. Unlike the millenials living paycheck to paycheck who are buying $500,000+ houses as their first property with less than 10% deposit. Mon n dad investors have other assets built over their lifetime that they can use if it came to the crunch. The ones that will lose everything are the young who spent more they can afford because they’re more concerned with how they appear than what they can afford.

It's funny that you'd try and counter what the industry says by googling an opinion piece from the Drum of all places. One aimed at negative gearing (which is certainly one of the reasons we have so much "amateur" property investment in Australia) and saying it's mostly helping the wealthy. Especially after whinging about "leftists" and "communism".

Even so, that article doesn't dispute that only 3.6% of investment property buyers can do so without taking on debt. 80% of loss making investment properties have owners earning under $80,000pa and most of those are relying on the increasing property values. The Drum tries to whittle that figure down, but largely resorts to stating the percentage of investment debt held by the upper quintile of earners (the upper quintile are still mum and pop investors mind you, despite an average income of $260K pa). Of course you'd expect that wealthier investors are largely buying more expensive properties and taking out bigger loans, so that figure means nothing in this context. They calculated the amount of foreign investors in that figure at 2.3%. Is that supposed to support your argument?

35% of Australia's investment mortgages are non-institutional. That's about triple what you see in Canada, the US or the UK.

That's why if there's a crash, it's likely to be brutal and fast. I know some are saying it'll be a "soft landing", but I can't see what they are basing that on other than wishful thinking and our current employment rate. Maybe they just mean "soft" compared to the fallout from subprime lending and a resulting global financial crisis?

Millenials (in the Gen Y sense) are buying investment properties now. They are mum and pop investors. Unlike the previous generations they probably can't remember the "recession we had to have" or 17% interest rates.
We've had 25 years of market boom.

What they are doing is moving to Australia and buying up baby food and baby formula there and shipping it back to China. These people make a fortune (up to the equivilent of $10,000 a month) because China has a shortage of these products.

What they are doing is moving to Australia and buying up baby food and baby formula there and shipping it back to China. These people make a fortune (up to the equivilent of $10,000 a month) because China has a shortage of these products.

Click to expand...

The "daigou" can't usually immigrate here with that as their intended business. Most of them don't even pay taxes. There's a few official businesses, but a lot of them are here as students (which do heavily subsidise Australian tertiary educations and are a massive economic boon).